The greatest gift is that of sacrifice. Christ gave his life for us. A clone would never sacrifice; it means nothing because the next day they can wake up and do it all over again. Nothing has meaning when you are a clone. Not love, not death, not life.
The Lord says Thou Shalt Not Kill, not Thou Shalt Not Murder, so no, I am not suggesting you create a clone hunting army. But if you meet a man who tells you he is a clone, pity him. Know you are staring into the eyes of a soulless man. Do not listen to his arguments about anything, because he is not arguing from a place of morality. He has no place in God’s heaven. Even worse than the amoral, the non-believers, the breakers of the Ten Commandments, is the clone, for the soulless’s actions stem from a place neither good nor evil. They stem from a place we don’t even know yet, and that is what scares me the most.
Father Gunter Orman stopped writing and sat back in his chair, sighing. His office was simple, as simple as any of the buildings on Luna could be. Unlike the monks who embraced poverty on Earth, Gunter had to accept the luxuries of colony life, or die. His walls were made of bricks that were a fusion of plastic and moon dust, using plentiful material up here, but outrageously expensive on Earth. The walls were a light gray, since he had refused paint to brighten it up. His furnishings were simple, bed and desk made from Luna resources except for his wooden desk chair, which had been a gift from his grandparents on Earth. His church was fancier than he’d like; the Vatican had spent a great deal to bring God’s glory to Luna, even shipping stained glass to the moon. It couldn’t catch the sunlight the way glass would on Earth, but it was a nice gesture.
Gunter judged his phrasing on his sermon. Everyone knew his stance on cloning, but he hadn’t made it an actual homily yet. The cardinals back home would be upset, he knew. Pope Beatrice I was severely anti-cloning, but even she hadn’t gone as far as to suggest it wasn’t a sin to kill them.
It was hard to live so far from the governing body of the church. He had only visited Earth three times in his life, each time a dizzying physical hardship because of the gravitational strain on his Luna-born body. He had seen the Vatican in its opulence and met the governing cardinals. They vetted carefully the priests who took their message to Luna, as they were far from the church’s control. But Gunter was different; he had been born on Luna, understood the people there, and was the first to enter the virtual seminary set up by missionaries. He had become more and more radical as his years had gone by, and he was due a visit from a cardinal soon. He expected this visit would end with gentle encouragement to retire.
But before that day came, he would leave his mark.
He wasn’t ready to retire. He could preach on this subject until his death if he needed to. He had stated his opinions on clones quite frankly; it went beyond good and evil into a place that was gray, and that scared him badly.
His office door opened behind him. “Mother Rosalind, is that you?” he asked without looking up from his terminal. “Can I ask you to check some spelling for me?”
He heard a chuckle, and then blinding pain exploded on the back of his head. Then nothing.
It had been Mother Rosalind. That was the thing that shocked him for years afterward: It had been Mother Rosalind who had chuckled behind him, and then hit him. His second in command, a priestess from Earth who had learned under him, and was becoming his greatest confidante. A clone plant.
He woke in a windowless lab, strapped to a cot. He struggled ineffectually, and nearly vomited from the pain on the back of his head. His fair hair felt wet. “Where—?” he managed to mumble.
“You’re in one of the cloning labs,” Mother Rosalind said. She was out of her habit now and dressed in white pants and a red blouse, as per the latest Luna fashion, for all her Earth-born stocky proportions. In street clothes, her brown skin wasn’t so stark as it was against the light habit, and she looked much younger; Gunter guessed she must be about thirty-five. If this was her first life, of course.
“Do you even have a soul?” he whispered, and she didn’t answer.
She was talking to a tall man of Earth Indian descent, with a few generations on Luna making his bone length long. He towered over her as they whispered together, and Orman thought he heard the man chastise her for injuring him. “He could have brain damage from that concussion,” he said in the lilting accent of northern Luna, where most Southeast Asian–descended people settled.
“He’s taller than I am,” she said. “I didn’t want to fight him.”
“No excuse. You’re younger and stronger. I will have to examine him to make sure he is well enough to do the mindmap.”
“Careful. He’ll fight you,” she said. “And he’s awake.”
The man leaned over Gunter, smiling. “Hello Father Orman. How are you feeling?”
Gunter closed his eyes and began muttering the Hail Mary.
His eyes flew open again when he felt hands on his head. He squirmed in revulsion at first, and fear second as the hands slipped a copper band over his head. The room seemed to tip and spin as he struggled, and his head felt as if it were on fire. He turned his head to the side and vomited all over the man.
Shaking and breaking out in a cold sweat, Gunter was unable to continue to fight the man tightening the band on his head. It quickly warmed to his skin. “This won’t hurt, just taking your vitals,” the man said, apparently not noticing the vomit on him.
Gunter tried to speak but nothing could come out. His head swam, and as the band warmed past body temperature, he began remembering his life vividly, growing up on Luna, his first communion, the pain and wonder of visiting Earth for the first time, the day he was appointed to the only Catholic church on Luna.
He drifted in and out of consciousness. He was pretty sure they drugged him, since he no longer felt pain.
The sins came roaring back as well, the small thefts he did as a child, the sharp words that hurt people he loved, and the times his sermons had pushed someone toward something less than holy, when his intentions had been so pure. A bright spot of shame flared as he remembered the time he had gotten drunk in seminary and had fornicated with a friend bound for priestesshood. It had been her idea, “Just to make sure we know what we’re giving up,” but admittedly he hadn’t argued much.
“Vitals.” It was a lie, he realized with a start. This wasn’t a device that took his vitals, they were taking his mindmap, trying to copy his very being, but releasing his soul. He tried to struggle again, the hair on the back of his head feeling thick and matted. Vertigo seized him and he dry-heaved, which only made the memories more vivid, the shameful ones seeming louder than the good ones.
His last thought before he passed out was gratitude that the encroaching darkness might mean death.